


Break on Through

by mizface



Series: Nature Boy [1]
Category: Welcome to Night Vale, due South
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Gen, Trope Bingo Round 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-15
Updated: 2013-07-15
Packaged: 2017-12-20 06:03:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/883786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mizface/pseuds/mizface
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fraser opened the door to Turnbull’s office to find the room empty, which was odd; he was certain he’d seen Turnbull go in a few minutes before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Break on Through

**Author's Note:**

> A thousand and one thanks to the amazing akamine_chan and omens for beta reading this, and calming my nerves about posting fic for WtNV. And agreeing that the magical realism of due South and unreality of Welcome to Night Vale were a good match.

Fraser knocked on the door to Turnbull’s office, but there was no answer. He opened the door to find the room empty, which was odd; he was certain he’d seen Turnbull go in a few minutes before. Fraser walked in to put the file he’d needed Turnbull to look over onto the man’s desk. As soon as he entered, a wave of heat passed through the room. It was shockingly, staggeringly intense, enough to make him stumble and hit the corner of the desk, knocking papers to the floor. It was gone as soon as it had appeared, and Fraser shook his head as he bent to clean the mess he’d made of Turnbull’s files. From his vantage point he could see a faint light pulsing out from the bottom of Turnbull's closet. Fraser stood, frowning, and placed the files on the desk, straightening them before he moved toward the door. He needed to have words with his father; haunting Fraser's closet was one thing, but to annex space in a stranger's closet was beyond presumptuous.

He opened the door, ready to admonish his father, but stopped as the heat he'd felt flashed again, making the air ripple in front of him as the light grew brighter and brighter and then suddenly blinked out, leaving only total blackness. Fraser blinked rapidly, afterimages of strange, writhing shapes floating behind his eyelids. When his vision cleared, he didn’t know what to make of what he saw. 

It wasn't his father’s cabin. And the light and heat weren’t from a fire in the fireplace. In front of him was a desert, vast and endless, like a mirror image of the vast snowy plains of his home. The sun burned bright above, though it somehow seemed darker than it should be, an almost angry reddish-orange, and closer. Fraser looked away from it with an effort, the buzz he hadn't even consciously acknowledged fading as he turned his attention elsewhere. Fraser felt something like a tectonic shift not under his feet, but to his right, and as he looked in that direction he saw the air vibrate. A hummingbird flitted by, close enough to tickle his ear, and the landscape shifted and tilted, coalescing into the outskirts of a town.

Fraser stared, uncertain. This obviously wasn't his father's doing, so really, he should close the door and leave well enough alone. Before he could do just that, the radio on the table behind Turnbull's desk crackled to life. Literally crackled; silver and purple sparks surrounded it. Fraser started to reach to unplug it before something caught fire, but stopped as he saw the plug, dangling near the floor and nowhere near an outlet. The last of the sparks flickered out, and a deep, sonorous voice spoke over slightly unsettling music.

"And now, the traffic. Exciting news, listeners. It's that time of year again. Not the Biennial Current, Former and/or Imaginary Pet Parade - that was last month, or next week if you're on the Town Council's Temporal Flexibility plan. And it was, or will be, quite the spectacle. Hope you didn't or won't miss it. No, it's Transdistance Touchpoint Day! That's right, this is the day where the physical space between two points no longer matters, and in fact, objects and places are encouraged to ignore the laws of physics and get a little, or a lot closer. So give your vehicles a rest today, dear listeners, and walk wherever you need to go. Odds are, it won't take long at all. Just make sure you watch where you're going and look all six ways before taking that next step. Wouldn't want to merge with oncoming traffic today, that would just be messy." 

Fraser blinked, trying and failing to make sense of the radio announcer's words. He wanted to dismiss them entirely, but the voice was so unnervingly soothing and forcefully cheerful. So trustworthy. He wanted to believe that voice, because even though it should be gibberish, the announcer made it sound perfectly reasonable.

Fraser felt himself slide a little. He looked down to see that he'd taken a step forward; one foot was in the sand, shifting as he tried to find purchase on the unfamiliar ground. Then the sand shifted more, bucking up as something underneath his foot _moved._ That startled him enough to shake off the complacency that had started to envelop him. He moved away from the door, closing it firmly. There was more resistance than there should have been, and his hand came away damp and slightly sticky, as if he'd had to push through something viscous to close it.

As the door shut, the radio clicked off, the two events too simultaneous to be anything but linked. Fraser stared at the door for a minute longer, but nothing happened. No movement, no more light emanating from its edges. No heat. No hypnotizing voice from the powerless radio.

He left Turnbull's office for the relative sanity of his own. He never mentioned anything to Turnbull, who emerged from his office half an hour later looking happy and somehow more tan than he’d been earlier that day. 

And if Fraser was a little more forgiving of the late night construction, or grateful for his father's bizarre, but innocuous advice, well, the reasons behind that were his own business.


End file.
